


Another Sky

by Seascribe



Category: Lantern Bearers - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Cultural Differences, F/M, Motherhood, language learning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-01
Updated: 2012-08-01
Packaged: 2017-11-11 05:31:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/475037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seascribe/pseuds/Seascribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The worst of it, Flavia thinks, is that this does not feel like a betrayal."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another Sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tegels](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tegels/gifts).



> Written as a gift for Tegels in the Sutcliff Swap. I cannot thank Bunn enough for her endless patience in helping me figure out elements of this story, teaching me all kinds of useful things about Saxons, and betaing. Enormous thanks also to Isis for her insightful betaing, useful etymological information, and help with fixing the ending. The title is from the song Rowena sings in the book.
> 
> A note about warnings: I chose not to warn, but given the circumstances of Flavia's marriage, this story does deal with themes of consent issues. However, no non- or dub-con occurs on screen.
> 
> I grant permission for others to make any type of fanwork based on this story.

*  
Flavia is glad that she cannot understand what they say to her. That makes it easier to lock herself away inside her own head, so that everything around her becomes only a blur, a wash of colour and motion before her eyes without form or meaning, their guttural words only noise, like a dog's barking. If she allows herself to notice anything more than that, Flavia is afraid she will start screaming again and never stop.

But when a woman puts a slab of coarse dark bread and yellow cheese into her hand and says in British, "You must eat," Flavia does not start screaming. She eats, and then looks around for more. The same woman brings her a cloth to wash the blood from her hands and face, a clean dress of brown wool. She does not speak to Flavia any more than she must, and Flavia wonders if that is not some small act of mercy.

*

His name is Cutha. Flavia does not need to know their tongue to understand that much, and she understands also that he is taking her to wife. Brynna, who had been the first to speak to Flavia here, comes with two other British slaves to pet Flavia and braid her hair, washing her face and dressing her in a fine blue kirtle. They tell her how beautiful she looks, and no one tells her that she is lucky. That is good, because if they did, Flavia would claw their eyes out.

They do not leave her alone, not for a moment, and so even if Flavia were strong enough--oh, if only she were strong enough, but she is not, Lord God forgive her, she is not--she could not take the sharp little carving knife to her wrists and put an end to it. Flavia goes dry-eyed to her wedding feast. Her husband smiles at her and gives her a smacking kiss, so that the crowd in the hall shout their approval. She pours the mead for him and her hands do not tremble.

At first, Flavia does not understand what is happening when her husband pulls her down beside him on the bench, not until he dangles the ring on its leather thong in front of her face, grinning at her through his beard. A spark of green fire flashes in the ring's depths, and Flavia stares, frozen, all the clamour of the hall seeming to go silent and still. Cutha mutters something reprovingly and takes her hand, folding her cold fingers around the ring.

"Thank you, my lord," she whispers, in the clumsy Saxon words the other women have taught her, and then bursts into tears. _Oh, Aquila,_ she thinks. It should have been his. But she is the last.

Cutha puts his hand on her shoulder, his mouth tilting wryly as he turns to speak to the other men in the hall, who laugh. When Flavia does not stop crying, he sighs, and leads her away to bed.

"Flavia, Flavia," her husband says, and something else that sounds coaxing, as kind as anything can sound in their guttural, ugly language. Flavia does not care what he is saying, does not want his kindness. She turns her face away, letting her tears soak into the blanket.

He puts a proprietary hand on her hip and rolls her over. Flavia closes her eyes. She does not expect his broad, calloused palm cupping her cheek, and flinches away.

He trails his thumb along the line of her brow and says in halting, thick Latin, "Look at me." Shocked, Flavia does. He is smiling at her, rather hopefully, and Flavia glares at him, her tears giving way beneath a sudden rush of fury. How dare he smile at her, after everything he has done. _How dare he_.

It crosses her mind to spit in his face--let him beat her for it, right now there is no room in her heart to care--but before she decides to do it, he blows a frustrated breath through his mustaches and throws up his hands, muttering something incomprehensible as he pulls away.

Now, certainly, he will beat her, and Flavia closes her eyes again. But the only blow that lands is a light rap of his knuckles against her hip. "Move," he says, and Flavia realises that she is in the middle of the bed, leaving no room for him. He frowns, looking for all the world like a child denied a sweet, despite his scars and beard, and Flavia only just manages to choke back the tide of hysterical giggles that rise up in her throat. She rolls over, making space for him as bidden, and bites the inside of her cheek to hold her silence until she falls asleep, with her husband snoring behind her.

*

Flavia does not ask Cutha to begin teaching her their language. She does not ask him for anything, only does as she as bid, serving him at table and going to his bed afterwards, keeping his hearth and mending his clothes. No, he does it of his own accord; perhaps he has seen her with Brynna, stumbling through the ugly, unfamiliar syllables as they go about their work.

At first Flavia does not understand what he means by it, when he asks her very slowly and clearly what she has done that day. Her husband takes her blank look for one of incomprehension.

"What did you do today?" he asks again, and makes a clumsy gesture. It takes Flavia a few moments to realise that he means to signify twirling a spindle and drafting the wool. She shakes her head. Cutha narrows one eye at her. _Mending?_ he says and signs. _Washing? Weaving?_ Flavia shakes her head again and again, and laughs when he grows frustrated, blowing through his mustaches in the way that is beginning to be familiar. Cutha looks startled for a moment, and then grins.

"What then?" he demands. Flavia does not understand what he says next, but his gesture makes it clear enough. _Gossipping?_ He is teasing her.

"No!" she says. Gyrtha's babe had come that afternoon, and Flavia's entire day had been passed in attending her, though she knew little enough of that kind of women's work. Flavia pretends to rock an invisible babe in her arms.

Cutha looks pleased with this explanation--perhaps he is glad to see her taking her place among the other women of the settlement. Not so long ago, Flavia would have flinched away from that thought. But then, too, she would sooner have spit in Cutha's face than smile at him. And now she is laughing with him, like a fond and dutiful wife.

"What did you do today, husband?" she asks, so that he can teach her the words for ship and sea and wind. He does not talk to her about the raids they are making ready for, the burning and death and plunder, and so Flavia does not have to think about those things. She can listen to his half-understood stories and smile at his jests, and push the hurt so far away that she almost does not feel it at all.

The worst of it, Flavia thinks, is that none of this feels like a betrayal.

*

When the boats run up on the landing beach, Flavia joins the stream of women and children flowing out onto the shingle, caught up in the rushing current of excitement. But just beneath the surface Flavia can feel a sharp-edged terror, the thought lurking in the back of each woman's mind that it might be her man amongst the ones who have not come home from this summer's war trail and raiding. If Cutha has not come home—for a moment, Flavia imagines it, and _oh_ , it is not terror beating in her breast at that thought. But there would only be a new man to come after him, perhaps a worse man. Flavia stretches up onto her toes, searching for the familiar face amongst the battered and exhausted men coming up from the longboats.

She hears someone calling her name and sees Gyrtha, holding the little one on her hip as she pushes her way through the crowd to stand by Flavia’s side. Somewhere nearby, a new widow’s voice rises in a throbbing wail, and Flavia bites her lip and clenches her fists in the folds of her skirt until her fingers ache. Gyrtha smiles at her and takes her hand, squeezing it tight.

"It will be well," Gyrtha promises. "He will have brought you silver to buy a fine new kirtle and a bronze kettle for the hearth." She means only to be kind, because of course Gyrtha does not have to fight back memories of fire and blood and nightmares when she thinks of the gifts her man will bring back for her. Flavia tries to smile at her.

She does not see Cutha until the moment before he flings his arms around her. Flavia flinches back, that last, hideous night on the farm springing up nightmare vivid behind her eyes. For an awful moment, they stand there frozen, until Flavia sucks in a deep, painful breath and forces herself to move, putting her arms around his neck.

"Welcome home, husband," she says, and Cutha grins, scattering scratchy kisses all over her face. The hollow ache in the pit of Flavia's stomach eases a little.

"It is good to be home," he says agreeably. "And is it well with you?"

"Yes," Flavia says after a long moment. "Yes, it is well with me."

*

Gyrtha is adamant that the child will be a boy. Flavia wants to ask how on earth she can know, when it is so early and she has born only the one child herself, and that one a girl. But she does not ask, and in her private heart, she hopes that Gyrtha is wrong and this babe will be a girl child, a daughter who will not ever take up a sword on the war trail. Flavia waits as long as she can to tell Cutha the news.

He spreads his hand over her belly, beaming at her. "Will it be a son?"

"Gyrtha says so," Flavia answers.

"But what do you say?" Cutha asks.

"I say that you will just have to wait until the spring and see," Flavia retorts, and Cutha laughs.

The babe is born three days before the men go off to the raiding and the war trail.

"A fine, healthy son, just as I told you," Gyrtha says, smiling as she swaddles the pink, wailing baby and lays him on the floor at his father's feet. Flavia lets out a little cry, wholly forgetting the way these things are done among the Saxons, and Gyrtha pats her hand. "Hush now. See, all is well." For Cutha has picked the child up, holding it awkwardly in his big, calloused hands, staring down on it with an expression remarkably like terror on his face. Flavia feels a rush of fondness for him, so sharp and sudden that it is almost like pain. 

“Bring him to me,” she says, and Cutha startles, coming to lay the baby at her breast.

"What will you call him?" her husband asks. He drops to one knee beside the bed, leaning close over her to look into his son’s face.

Flavia touches the baby's thatch of black hair. Cutha would not be pleased, if she called their son by a Roman name, or a British one, but she does not think that he would forbid it. But when the bairn is old enough to run with the other boys--when he sets out on the war trail--such a name would be a hardship for him, so that he might one day come to hate her for it. And every time she called for him, it would kindle the old ache in her heart, and that is no burden for a child to bear. No, better for both of them—for _all_ of them, some soft, secret voice murmurs in the back of her mind--to let the past lie buried.

And yet, as pink and wrinkled and new as he is, Flavia can tell already that the boy’s looks will always be a reminder of that buried past. His hazy blue eyes will darken, she thinks, and perhaps he will be olive-skinned and hawk-nosed. Perhaps he will look something like Aquila, when he is grown. But there is something in him too of Cutha—how could there not be?—and it will be under Cutha’s roof that he grows to manhood. Flavia imagines that there will be more and more of her husband to be seen in the child as the years roll on, and is that not after all as it should be?

“Mull, I think,” she says, after a very long while. She wants to cry, for Aquila, for this half-breed child who should be the son of a Roman father, for herself. But she is too weary now for tears, and Cutha is smiling at her, smiling at the babe.

“It is a good and fitting name,” he says, and kisses her cheek. He is reluctant to leave them, but the work in the shipyard will not wait long, even for the birth of a new son. Mull bursts into a furious wail when Cutha kisses his downy head, tentative and clumsy, and Flavia cannot help but smile when the same look of terror from before crosses her husband’s weathered face. 

Three days later, when the ships sail, Flavia carries her son down to the landing beach to see the warriors off with the other women and children. She hates this moment, hates the sight of the men in their war gear and the way their eyes glint with excitement and grim good humour for the fighting to come. It makes her remember too clearly the red ruin of the farm and the shrieking black terror that had come after, and always before she has hidden away in the house. But it will be a full season that her son will not see his father, and so Flavia takes her courage in both hands and goes.

“Bring yourself back safely,” she says to Cutha. It the first time Flavia has ever said anything like that to him, and she does not try to fool herself into believing that it is only for the bairn’s sake that she says it. Cutha’s answering grin is rakish and cocksure, but the kiss he gives her is tender.

There is nothing more to say, and then the longboats are slipping their moorings and turning out to sea, slipping down the Saxon wind. Flavia does not linger to watch their going, but turns away and carries her son home.


End file.
